In our latest installment of “People Behind the Pump,” we sat down with Beau Randall, a principal software engineer on our Digital Health team, to learn more about what he’s been up to professionally and personally since joining Tandem Diabetes Care last year. If you'd like to join Beau and browse our current openings -- including some that are offered remotely -- you can do so at tandemdiabetes.com/careers.
What drew you to Tandem originally?
Having spent half my career working on enterprise healthcare systems and the other half working on open-source tech at startups, this role has given me the opportunity to synthesize the two. And it goes without saying that working on products that truly improve people’s lives is always rewarding.
What keeps you at Tandem?
It’s great to be on a team that puts quality first, not only to delight the customer, but from the standpoint of architecture and code quality. My team really cares about doing good work and has the talent to execute.
What's your favorite dev tool?
Visual Studio Code: It’s become the de-facto tool for React development and it just ‘works.’ I’ve run the gamut – from using Vim to Sublime Text to full-blown integrated developer environments. Right now Visual Studio Code simplifies my decision matrix and I appreciate that.
What aspect of your role and team do you enjoy the most?
I enjoy contributing to architecture, process, and hiring decisions that pave the future of the product and the team. I also enjoy getting to work with engineers of such a high caliber.
What aspect of your role is the most challenging?
Time management and keeping focused, as there is a fair bit of multitasking involved.
Tandem has been named a “Best Place to Work.” What do you think makes Tandem great?
Companies are made of people, and the people here are particularly positive and motivating. My larger team is insistent on making these trying times better, both from a professional and personal level.
How has Tandem helped you in your career development?
I feel like I’ve grown more in the first five months here than I did in the first year at my previous employer. As an engineer, it’s a really great place to be. From the quality of the engineering staff to the scale and scope of the problems we are looking to solve.
What was something really hard for you to get when you were learning it? What helped it click?
Understanding the event streams and state management from our pumps, along with making sense of some of the complexity and the history behind them. The internal pump seminars that QA and Engineering give have been very informative.
What are you learning right now?
I’ve been heads-down assisting in mostly data-centric work for our international web effort. But as I come up for air, I’m eager to help figure out some of the challenges surrounding our end-to-end testing strategy for our next-gen product line.
What advice would you give to recent new hires or interns looking to grow their career in software development?
More than anything, find a team that strongly believes in a mentor-mentee paradigm.
Has COVID and working from home affected your day-to-day work? If yes, how?
I’ve worked remote before, so that is not new to me. Still, physical isolation on top of that makes things all the more challenging as far as mental health is concerned. I like that we don’t sugarcoat that reality here. It is talked about openly amongst team members and we regularly do things to manage challenges as a team. We’re pragmatic here.
How many cups of coffee do you drink throughout a normal development day?
I make a double mocha first thing in the morning, every morning. It’s part of the ritual.
What do you like to do on your days off?
Exploring my new town of Denver. I live right in the heart of downtown, and even in the middle of a pandemic, there still are many things to explore, especially when it comes to driving a bit out of the way to go hiking or snowboarding.
Thanks, Beau, for sharing your experience with us. We love that the work you do each day creates such a positive impact on so many people’s lives.
If you or someone you know is interested in starting a career with Tandem Diabetes Care, please be sure to check out ourCareers site for more information.
